far more sun-bright and sparkling than Ireland. It is the
literature of a people accustomed to victory and predominance.
When they began to meet defeat they by no means acquiesced in
it. They regarded adverse fate, not with reverence, but with
contempt. They saw in sorrow no friend and instructress of the
human soul; were at pains to learn no lesson from her; instead,
they pitted what was their pride, but what they would have called
the glory of their own souls, against her; they made no terms,
asked no truce; but went on believing the human--or perhaps I
should say the Celtic--soul more glorious than fate, stronger to
endure and defy than she to humiliate and torment. In many sense
it was a fatal attitude, and they reaped the misery of it; but
they gained some wealth for the human spirit from it too. The
aged Oisin has returned from Fairyland to find the old glorious
order in Ireland fallen and passed during the three centuries of
his absence. High Paganism has gone, and a religion meek,
inglorious, and Unceltic has taken its mission thereto: tells
him the gods are conquered and dead, and that the omnipotent God
of the Christians reigns alone now.--"I would thy God were set on
yonder hill to fight with my son Oscar!" replies Oisin. Patrick
paints for him the hell to which he is destined unless he accepts
Christianity; and Oisin answers:

"Put the staff in my hands! for I go to the Fenians, thou
cleric, to chant
The warsongs that roused them of old; they will rise,
making clouds with their breath.
Innumerable, singing, exultant; and hell underneath them
shall pant,
And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them